Observations and provocations from The Times' Opinion staff

Chief justice: 'We were forced to think differently'

January 13, 2012 | 6:40
am

One of the biggest challenges for California's judicial branch has been the statewide deployment of a computerized case management system that will, it is hoped, make it quicker and easier for the public to file and find documents and quicker and easier for courts to share files and data among themselves and with law enforcement, child welfare and other agencies.

The Times' editorial board asked Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, during a Jan. 6 visit, whether court resources were so strapped that she and the rest of the Judicial Council should entertain offers from charities to fund essential court functions. Click to hear her response, and read it below:

I hope on my watch the judicial branch does not go begging. But what you say -- how you characterized it is a fair characterization. There are a lot of different ways to characterize it, but it was a philanthropic effort. We were forced, and I really mean it, forced to think differently about how we could bring technology to the branch.

Is it in our future? I hope not. Are we novel thinkers? Yes. Will we think of different ways if we can't get general fund funding? Yes. But that will be transparent and everyone will know and everyone will get a shot at us. That's what we're doing.

We asked Cantil-Sakauye about closing courtrooms that deal with lawsuits and other non-criminal matters due to budget cuts. Listen to her response:

Courts have tried to prepare the best they can…. We've also heard other courts say … and other courts have reduced the courtrooms that hear civil cases because they have to use their reduced staff, and reduced hours, to hear the constitutionally obligated cases, which are criminal cases.

We asked the chief justice about whether courtroom closures could affect public safety. Listen to her response:

You're talking about a potential backlog of people who have a proclivity or have driven under the influence and they get a court date somewhere out there and we're just going to take it on faith that they're not going to do it in those intervening months before they come back. There's definitely a public safety factor with the courts being backlogged.